Hello, this is Chris Young. Welcome to Episode 86 of Contemplating Life – Oscar Edition.
As previously reported, I’m not going to have time to review all nine of the 10 Best Picture nominated films I’ve seen this year in the kind of detail I usually do. So here is a brief summary of the films I’ve seen, what I liked or didn’t like, and what I think may or may not win.
Also, the YouTube version of this episode is not going to have the kinds of video clips or still pictures that I normally have when I do movie or TV reviews. I’m recording this on Saturday, March 1. The Oscars are tomorrow night, and I’m going to be lucky to get this thing done before then.
As reported last time, “Wicked” is one of my favorites of the year. There is one other fascinating musical up for consideration. That is the Netflix film “Emilia Pérez”. It is the story of a vicious cartel boss who is transgender and wants to become a woman. Pérez hires a lawyer, played by Zoe Saldaña, to recruit a surgeon to perform the operation. Pérez fakes her own death to start their life over as a woman. She makes provisions for a wife and children to escape to Switzerland, where they are given access to a hefty Swiss bank account. She has no idea her husband faked his death. Selena Gomez plays the wife. The majority of the film is in Spanish with English subtitles. While I usually don’t mind reading subtitles in a foreign language film, I found it particularly troubling during the song and dance numbers because I was too busy reading subtitles to enjoy the performances.
After the surgery, the story jumps four years. Emilia tracks down her former lawyer. This terrifies the lawyer, thinking that she is going to be killed because she is one of only two people who know her secret. On the contrary, Emilia wants to hire her again to help her reunite with her wife and kids. She will claim to be a cousin of the deceased husband.
Along the way, Emilia is then moved by the story of a woman who has a missing relative. Hundreds of people go missing in Mexico each year, either kidnapped or killed by the drug cartels. She formed a charity to help track down the fate of these missing people and bring closure to their families. Many of the missing were at her own people’s hands. Much of the information comes from interviewing people in jail who literally know where the bodies are buried.
The performances are top-notch all around. You genuinely feel Emilia’s anguish in her quest to live her true life as a woman and somehow make up for all the evil she created as a vicious cartel boss. As you might suspect, because she continues to live a lie, the truth has its way of catching up with her, and she cannot escape her violent past.
Although you might find it difficult to watch such a film with subtitles, it is certainly worth its nominations, and I can recommend it.
The film has been nominated for 13 Oscars, the most for a non-English-language film. Nominations include Best Picture, Best International Feature Film from France (which is surprising because it’s mostly in Spanish), Best Makeup and Hairstyling, Best Sound, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Cinematography, and Best Film Editing.
Director Jacques Audiard is also nominated. Karla Sofía Gascón is a controversial nominee for Best Lead Actress because she is the first transsexual to be nominated in any category other than the gender assigned at birth. As if that weren’t controversial enough, racist, antisemitic social media posts that Gascón made in the past have surfaced. Pundits seem to think that this controversy will hurt not only her chances but perhaps the chances of the entire film. That seems unfair. Controversies aside, I thought it was an outstanding performance that truly made me feel her plight.
Zoe Saldaña is nominated for Supporting Actress as the lawyer. While it is a fantastic performance, and probably deserving of the nomination. I was more impressed by Selena Gomez, who played the wife. My only previous familiarity with her work is in the show “Only Murders in the Building” alongside Steve Martin and Martin Short. In that series, she plays a rather timid, laid-back character. In my opinion, that doesn’t allow her to show off her acting skills compared to what she is called to do in this film. I was very much impressed by her performance.
In addition to the nomination for overall musical score, two of its songs are nominated for Best Original Song: “El Mal,” my favorite of the film, and “Mi Camino.” Typically, having two nominations in the same category for the same film is a problem because it splits the fans’ votes, but I wouldn’t be surprised if one of these songs wins.
IMDb lists 106 wins and an additional 245 nominations, but recall that they list dozens of nominations for awards you have never heard of.
The film has only earned a little over $15 million on an estimated budget of €25 million, however, it is on Netflix, and box office numbers don’t mean much for films released directly to streaming. It is still currently available on Netflix.
I think it is a good contender to win some awards if it can avoid the controversy.
Moving along…
There are two other films with strong female protagonists that I cannot recommend. I don’t find either of them to be worthy of their nominations for Best Picture nor their nominations for Lead Actress.
The first is “The Substance,” which stars Demi Moore as an aging actress. Although she is still quite attractive and has an exceptional fit body for a woman her age, she no longer lives up to the ideal of beauty expected by Hollywood. She hosts an exercise program on TV but is fired by the network, which wants a younger woman. Soon after, she is contacted by some mysterious company offering her “the substance.” This is a drug which, when injected, creates a younger clone of yourself. She reluctantly agrees to take the substance without much forethought or detailed explanation of the consequences of the decision.
In a pivotal scene, she stands naked in her bathroom and injects the first dose, which will create the clone. She falls to the ground and begins writhing in agony until her spine splits open. A fully formed adult, beautiful twenty-seven-year-old woman crawls out of her body defying every law of physics you can think of. How do you magically double the mass of a human being by simply injecting a chemical? We are clearly in the realm of fantasy and not science fiction.
The gimmick is that these two versions of the woman must share a life. One of them will be conscious for seven days while the other lies in a coma. After seven days, there is another injection and they swap positions with the older one taking over and the a younger one unconscious. To survive these seven days, you have to extract fluid from the unconscious version using a syringe and inject it into yourself.
The young clone is given the older actress’s former job and becomes a big overnight sensation. She enjoys fame and fortune so much that she gets greedy and tries to extend her seven days of consciousness. This drastically affects the older version, causing her to age rapidly.
The entire thing deteriorates when she attempts to clone herself yet again, turning into a hideous monster reminiscent of the creature in John Carpenter’s classic sci-fi horror film “The Thing.” John Carpenter isn’t the only director that this film references. We can easily see director Coralie Fargeat attempting to emulate the styles of Stanley Kubrick, David Cronenberg, and Brian De Palma, just to name a few. I never got the sense that she had a style of her own. Her nomination for Best Director is not deserved nor is her nomination for Best Original Screenplay.
It was nominated for a Golden Globe in the comedy category and indeed I found myself laughing not because it was finally but because it was so ridiculous. It tries to take a serious topic like our cultural obsession with youth and beauty, and it makes a mockery of itself. In no way do I believe it deserves a Best Picture nomination. Demi Moore won the Golden Globe award for Best Actress in a Comedy or Musical for the role and is nominated for the Best Actress Oscar. None of which are deserved. I think she must’ve just gotten some sort of sympathy vote for daring to be on camera naked at her age. This is at best a mildly entertaining cheesy horror movie. You might find it a guilty pleasure when it comes to your favorite streaming service, but overall, it is not Oscar-worthy.
It is nominated for Makeup and Hair and won the BAFTA and the Critics Choice awards in that category. I suppose the creature makeup was nomination-worthy.
Margaret Qualley received a Golden Globe Supporting Actress nomination as well as other nominations in her role as the younger version of our protagonist and I slightly enjoyed her performance more than that of Demi Moore. Qualley did not receive an Oscar nomination.
IMDb lists 128 wins and an additional 247 nominations. Although it earned only $17 million in the US and Canada, it earned $77 million worldwide on an estimated budget of $17.5 million.
It is currently available as a digital download from Amazon and other sources
The other undeserved nomination with a strong female lead character is “Anora.” This is the story of an exotic dancer and prostitute who lives in Brooklyn in the present day. Her boss at the strip club asked her to take on a special client named Ivan. He is a young, wealthy son of a Russian oligarch. Anora, who prefers to be called Ani, speaks Russian because her grandmother was Russian. After giving the client a lap dance, he asked if she ever offered private parties, and she gave him her contact information.
She goes to his mansion, which has a picturesque overview of the Hudson River, and she has sex with him. He invites her to a party on New Year’s Eve, and she has a girlfriend go and have a raucous time partying and doing drugs. She spends the night with Ivan, and he asks her to be his pretend girlfriend for an entire week. He offers her $10,000, and she asks for 15, and he agrees. Near the end of the week, they fly off to Vegas to party some more, and on their last night together, he proposes marriage. At first, she assumes he’s joking, but he seems serious, and she agrees. They get married in a Vegas chapel and then return to New York for more sex and partying.
The first 45 minutes of the film are nothing but them partying, drinking, smoking, and having sex. We get very little character development and zero plot.
Eventually, the young playboy’s Russian parents find out about the marriage and send three Armenian gangsters to the mansion to force them to get the marriage annulled. Ivan flees the mansion, leaving Ani to deal with the gangsters. They tried to tie her up to keep her from fleeing, but along the way, she kicked one of them in the face, breaking his nose.
They try to impress upon her that Ivan doesn’t really love her. They offer $10,000 to agree to the annulment and go away. The alternative is that the powerful Russian parents will ruin her life and the lives of everyone she loves. Throughout the rest of the film, they Go around New York trying to track down Ivan as she insists he really loves her.
In the end, of course, he doesn’t. She realizes that. They have to fly back to Vegas to get the annulment accompanied by the Russian parents and the Armenian gangsters. Along the way, we begin to see that one of the gangsters, Igor, begins to feel sorry for her.
The only marginally interesting scene in the entire film is after the annulment, Ivan’s mother screams at Ani, “You’re nothing but a whore!” To which Ani replies, “And your son hates you so much that he married me just to spite you.” At this point, Ivan’s father, who hasn’t had a word to say the entire time, begins laughing hysterically. I loved it
Like “The Substance,” this is, at best, a mildly entertaining B-movie that in no way deserves any of its nominations. It was awarded the prestigious Palm d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. This reminds me of the Palm d’Or winner two years ago, “Triangle of Sadness,” which highlighted the arrogance of the ultra-rich and their condescending attitude towards allegedly lower-class people. I find this ironic or hypocritical because the attendees at the film festival represent the rich upper crust of society. I think they believe it’s redeeming to give awards that criticize the very arrogance of the typical Festival attendees.
In addition to the undeserved Best Picture, Sean Baker is nominated for Directing, Original Screenplay, and Film Editing. Mikey Madison was nominated as Best Actress for the title role. One of the gangsters, Igor, who befriends her, played by Yura Borisov, has a Supporting Actor nomination for a mildly interesting performance. I don’t believe any of the nominations are justified.
IMDb reports 131 wins and an additional 272 nominations.
The film has earned $15 million in the US and Canada and $38 million worldwide on an estimated budget of just $6 million.
It’s a mildly amusing B-movie that I could recommend when it comes to streaming. It is currently available for purchase as a digital download on Amazon and other platforms.
Moving along…
Every year, there are one or two films when you see the trailer, and you can already imagine there will be a version of the trailer that adds the words “For Your Consideration.” At first glance, these films aim for award nominations and are probably worthy of them.
In varying degrees, we have three of these films this year. The first is probably the odds on favorite to win Best Picture and Best Actor. This is the three-and-a-half-hour epic film “The Brutalist.”
Adrian Brody stars as László Tóth, a Jewish architect from Hungary who immigrates to the US to escape the Nazis. He is forced to leave behind his wife and adult niece. He travels to Philadelphia, where he rooms in the storage closet of a furniture store owned by his cousin. They are approached by a young rich man, Harry Lee Van Buren, Jr, who wants them to redecorate his father’s office with custom furniture. The rich father is unaware of his son’s plans. When he returns home to see the work partially completed, he throws a fit… especially because they’ve hired “Negro workers” for the job. He fires everyone and refuses to pay for any of it. The cousin blames Brody for no reason and throws him out.
Eventually, the wealthy father Harrison Lee Van Buren Sr., played by Guy Pearce, realizes that the office remodeling is a masterpiece of design when it is featured in a photo spread in “Look” magazine. He tracks down László and commissions him to design a large community center on top of the hill on his estate. The center will contain meeting rooms, a library, a gymnasium with a pool, and a Christian chapel. The Van Buren also assists him in getting his wife and niece out of Europe to join him in the US.
László turns out to be an arrogant person who insists that no changes be made in his design. At one point, he even agrees to forgo much or all of his fees to preserve an expensive aspect of his design. At this point, I became confused about the title of the film. Was the rich benefactor the brutal one, or was it the architect? I wondered if this was based on a true story. A quick Google search revealed that it was not. The title comes from the style of architecture known as Brutalist style. It is a postmodern style of architecture known for bland concrete walls and uninteresting cubic structures.
I won’t bother spoiling the rest of the plot except to say that after an accident, the project is canceled and everyone is fired. Later, they attempted to resurrect the project, leading to a bizarre and violent encounter between the benefactor and the architect. The project gets canceled again, and we jump to an epilogue decades later when the architect was being celebrated for his lifetime of work. There appears to be some sort of explanation given by his niece as to why he was so insistent on his design of the community center, but I couldn’t follow it. His niece, who spoke with a thick Hungarian accent that I couldn’t understand it.
Although I hate to admit it, the only version of this film I could obtain was a bootleg camera copy. Naturally, there were no closed captions available. Even the open captions of the Hungarian dialogue was of such low contrast, I couldn’t read it. Because I respect copyright, I will purchase a copy of the film once it is available.
Speaking of the Hungarian accents, the film is controversial because the producers revealed that AI enhanced some of Brody’s and Jones’s Hungarian dialogue to make it more accurate. I’m not opposed to such the use of AI even though I think it’s entirely unnecessary. How much of the audience is going to 0now or care if the Hungarian pronunciation is perfect? Well, I suppose there are some. There are people complaining that the accents in “Emilia Pérez” were not accurate. They were not Mexican enough. They were from some other Hispanic territory.
“The Brutalist” received 10 Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, Cinematography, Original Score, Film Editing, and Production Design.
Brady Corbet is nominated for Director, and co-author of the Original Screenplay.
Adrian Brody is an odds-on favorite to win Best Actor. Felicity Jones does an admirable job as László’s wife Erzsébet Tóth. I should mention that when she arrives from Europe, she is in a wheelchair because she is ill from malnutrition. She is a strong woman who had been a journalist in Europe. With some assistance from the benefactor, she is able to continue her journalism career in America.
At a climactic moment in the film, she finds the strength to stand up from her wheelchair and deliver a scathing indictment of Van Buren. Suddenly, when she needs to “stand up to” the millionaire she is able to do so despite her disability. I found this to be a cringe-worthy gimmick. Despite my issues with this plot point, I believe Jones deserves her Supporting Actress nomination. Guy Pearce also creates a memorable character as Van Buren and deserves his Supporting Actor Nomination. IMDb lists 124 wins and an additional 344 nominations and I would not be surprised if it takes home multiple statues on Oscar night.
The film has grossed only $15 million in the US and Canada and $36.6 million worldwide on an estimated budget of $10 million.
I couldn’t judge the cinematography very well because I watched such a poorly captured copy. It was filmed in VistaVision, a 35mm film format in which the film travels through the camera and projector horizontally rather than vertically, giving it a larger image. This is similar to how IMAX film uses the same gimmick on 70mm film. The filmmakers wanted to use this older format because it was introduced at the same time as the events of the film.
The film itself probably deserves its nomination just for the audacity of telling an epic story over three and a half hours. But personally, I don’t think it was worth my time. I will pay for it out of a sense of honor, but I would not have felt it was worth it to go to a theater and spend three hours and 45 minutes, with a 15-minute intermission, to see this film.
Moving along…
Another of the films whose trailer implies “For your consideration” is “Conclave”. It’s a fictional story of the Vatican conclave that gathers to elect a new Pope. It stars Ralph Fiennes, Stanley Tucci, John Lithgow, and Isabella Rossellini.
Everything about this film makes it worthy of all of its nominations, except perhaps the Supporting Actress nomination for Rossellini, who is only in the film for a couple of minutes. She doesn’t contribute much. The story of the political infighting surrounding the election of a new Pope will keep you on the edge of your seat, guessing what new scandal will pop up next, thus eliminating various candidates. I had a pretty good idea of who I thought was going to end up winning the election, and I was wrong.
There is some interesting symbolism in the film. At one point, there is a terrorist attack just outside the Vatican, which causes the windows of the Sistine Chapel to blow out. That’s a turning point in the movie. It’s a subtle reference to the statement by Pope John XXIII, who is reported to have said that he called the Second Vatican Council in order to “throw open the windows and allow the Holy Spirit enter.” By the way, there seems to be some controversy over whether or not Pope John actually said that.
Overall, the acting, cinematography, plot, direction, and everything about the story were top-notch until we got to the end. There is a plot twist at the end that I don’t think you could have remotely anticipated. I will have more to say about that plot twist in a skippable epilogue at the end of this podcast. All I can say at this point is that I felt like it ruined an otherwise excellent film. I can still recommend it, and your opinion of the ending might vary from mine, so you may like it more than I did.
In addition to the Best Picture Nomination, it was also nominated for Original Score, Adapted Screenplay, Film Editing, Production Design, and Costume Design. Ralph Fiennes deserves his Lead Actor nomination. As mentioned earlier, I didn’t think Rossellini did anything special to deserve her Supporting Actress nomination.
IMDb lists 82 wins and an additional 312 nominations. It has earned $32 million in the US and Canada and $98 million worldwide on an estimated budget of $20 million. It is currently available for streaming on PeacockTV. I will have more to say about the film at the end of the podcast in a spoiler section.
Our next film is Denis Villeneuve’s Dune Part 2. I am completely unable to be objective about this though because I was a huge fan of Frank Herbert’s original novel when I read it back in my college days. I didn’t hate David Lynch’s 1984 adaptation of the work as much as I probably should have. There was a SyFy Channel adaptation that was adequate but boring. Together, “Dune: Part One” and “Dune: Part Two” are the adaptations that fans and I have been waiting for for decades. It is an amazing piece of filmmaking that shows great respect to the original work. The changes that Villeneuve makes from the original novel are mostly positive. Paul Atreides’s girlfriend Chani played by Zendaya is a much more interesting character in this film than she is in the novel.
The screenplay by Villeneuve and co-author Jon Spaihts does a great job, in part through their reimagining of Chani, of explaining that Paul really is not a hero. He is a dangerous vengeful person with a Messiah complex who is going to lead the Empire into a deadly war for his own selfish personal reasons. “Dune” was always supposed to be a cautionary tale about Messiah figures but many readers didn’t get that from the story. In this adaptation, the message is much clearer.
There was one plot change that did bother me. The timeline of Paul’s time in the desert is compressed. When Paul and his mother fled into the desert, she was pregnant with Paul’s sister. In the original novel and other adaptations, Paul spends several years leading the Fremen in a rebellion against the House Harkonnen who overthrew Paul’s father. In the book, by the climax of the story, Paul’s sister is approximately four years old, yet she is not yet born in this film adaptation. That means everything Paul did to rally the Fremen in rebellion and Paul’s awakening as a Messiah is compressed into less than nine months. That just didn’t make sense to me. Except for that change, everything else was either highly true to the original story or the changes made good sense to me.
It much deserves its 5 Oscar nominations for Best Picture, Visual Effects, Cinematography, Production Design, and Sound.
Although it received no acting or directing nominations, I have to say the entire film is top-notch, especially the performances by Timothée Chalamet as Paul Atreides and Zendaya as Chani.
Timeout for a quick joke. Austin Butler, who is most known for playing Elvis in the 2022 biopic, plays Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen. There is a climactic fight scene between him and Paul near the end of the film. When Paul kills him, I leaned over to my friend Rich and said, “Elvis has left the building.” By the way, there’s another rockstar connection to that character. Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen was played by rock/jazz superstar Sting in the 1984 David Lynch adaptation of the story. I liked Sting’s portrayal better.
I would call “Dune: Part 2” a close tie with “Wicked” for my favorite nominated film this year, but I don’t think either it or “Wicked” have a chance at Best Picture.
The film has earned over $714 million on an estimated budget of $190 million. Is currently available for streaming on Netflix and Max.
Speaking of Timothée Chalamet, he has turned in quality performances this year in the lead roles in two of the Best Picture nominees. Although not nominated for Dune, he is nominated as Best Actor in our next film.
“A Complete Unknown” is a phenomenal biopic covering the early career of legendary songwriter Bob Dylan. The film opens with 19-year-old Dylan arriving in New York with little or no money and an acoustic guitar. He’s on a sort of pilgrimage to visit his folk singing hero Woody Guthrie, who is hospitalized, struggling with the severe effects of Huntington’s Disease. Guthrie was mostly bedridden and unable to speak. While visiting, Dylan meets folk singing icon Pete Seeger, brilliantly played by Edward Norton.
Norton’s nomination for Best Supporting Actor is very much deserved. In fact, I think it may be my favorite performance by anyone this year. As Norton begins to discover what a musical genius Bob Dylan is, the expressions on his face of pure joy are a sight to behold. He doesn’t have to say anything. His body language and facial expressions speak volumes.
There are also moments where Dakota Fanning gives a tremendous performance as Dylan’s girlfriend, Sylvie Russo. Again, it’s not so much what she says, but the facial expressions she delivers while listening to Dylan perform are a master class in acting. Unfortunately, she did not receive a supporting actress nomination. That honor went to Monica Barbaro for her portrayal of folksinger Joan Baez. She too gives a phenomenal performance, although if I had been nominating for the film, I might have given it to Fanning instead. They both really deserve a nomination, but that would kill both of their chances of winning because it is rare that either performer wins when two performers from the same film are nominated in the same category. Fans of the film split their votes, and some other films win.
Chalamet gives an amazing performance, singing more than a dozen musical numbers. He channels Bob Dylan completely. It is an amazing accomplishment.
The film covers the beginning of his career up through an iconic performance at the Newport folk music festival, in which he shocked the audience and alienated much of the folk community by performing on electric guitar with a full rock band behind him. The audience failed to realize that this new era of his career contained lyrics that were every bit as powerful as anything he’d written before and were completely in tune with the social justice themes of the folk music movement. He was seen as betraying folk music principles, yet he was simply taking their message to a new level that would reach an even larger audience than the folk music Nich.
Like several of the films that we discussed last year, this one explores the personal cost that must be paid by those who are friends and family of someone who is driven by genius.
Overall, let’s call this one my third favorite nominated film. Sadly, it was only available by bootleg camera copy, and although the video quality was above average for such a download, the audio suffered terribly. I will definitely be purchasing a clean, legitimate copy as soon as it is available so I can fully enjoy the film. I highly recommend this one. I don’t know if it has much of a chance to win any of the awards, but I would be greatly pleased if it does.
The eight Oscar nominations include Best Picture, Sound, Adapted Screenplay, and Costume Design. Director James Mangold is also nominated. Timothée Chalamet is nominated as Best Actor and is the only person who might give Adrian Brody any competition. Edward Norton much deserves his Supporting Actor nomination, and Monica Barbaro deserves her Supporting Actress nomination for her portrayal of Joan Baez.
IMDb lists 23 wins and an additional nominations. The film has earned $110 million worldwide on an estimated budget of $70 million.
I was not able to see the film “I’m Still Here,” which, like “Emilia Pérez,” is nominated both for Best Picture and for Foreign Film. That is the first time in which there have been two such double nominations in the same year.
I was able to obtain a copy of the nominated film “Nickel Boys,” but I found the film to be unwatchable. The film is shot from the point of view camera of the two main characters. You are working out through your eyes and occasionally using the character’s reflection in a window. It switches POV about every 8-10 minutes. I found this cinematography so annoying that I couldn’t watch the film. It’s based on a 2020 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Colin Whitehead. It tells the story of a pair of boys who go to the historic Dozier School, a reform school in Florida that operated for over 100 years and was eventually closed because it brutally abused the boys.
I can easily presume that it is a poignant and compelling story. I may go back to it and try again, but overall, it’s going to be a difficult film to watch because of the bizarre cinematography style. In addition to its Best Picture nomination, it is also nominated for Adapted Screenplay. IMDb lists 50 wins and an additional 189 nominations. It has earned only $2.8 million worldwide with an estimated budget of $20 million.
All of the Best Actress nominees were in Best Picture nominated films this year. So, we have covered all of those.
In the Best Actor category, Coleman Domingo received a nomination for the film “Sing Sing.” Based on the quality of his work in nominated films last year, I presume he has turned in another great performance. I have access to the film but have not had time to watch it yet.
We have to talk briefly about “The Apprentice.” It stars Sebastian Stan as a young Donald Trump who is learning to be a ruthless businessman from iconic corrupt lawyer Roy Cohn. I can’t testify how accurate the film is, but if it is accurate, it explains that everything you know about the kind of man that Donald Trump is today, he received studying under Cohn.
In this case, Trump is “The Apprentice. England
Sebastian Stan deserves his Best Actor nomination, as does Jeremy Strong deserves his Supporting Actor nomination for his portrayal of Cohn.
I highly recommend the film, which is currently available for digital download purchase on Amazon and other platforms. There is no word on when subscription streaming or cable will be available. This small independent film has earned $4 million in the US and Canada and $17 million worldwide on an estimated budget and $50 million.
By the way, both “The Apprentice” and “Nickel Boys” were shot in a nearly 4:3 aspect ratio like an old analog TV rather than a modern widescreen format. This continues the trend we saw last year in “Maestro” and “The Holdovers” in which the cinematography tries to reflect the time period in which the story takes place.
I was also able to see “A Real Pain” in which Kieran Culkin received a Supporting Actor nomination. It was written and directed by Jesse Eisenberg who also stars in the film. They play a pair of mismatched cousins who reunite for a vacation tour of Poland to honor their late grandmother who survived the concentration camps during World War II. It’s a poignant little buddy comedy with quality performances. I doubt Culkin will win but he earned his nomination well.
So, there we have it. We have briefly covered all 10 Best Picture nominees as well as all of the acting awards that we were able to see. I had hoped to cover the animated features, which include Pixar’s “Inside Out 2”, “The Wild Robot,” and “Flow,” which was also nominated in the Foreign Film category. I have access to these films as well as the stop motion animated films “Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl” and “Memoir of a Snail” which also received feature animation nominations. “Memoir of a Snail” is the first R-rated film to receive a Best Animated Feature nomination.
My prediction is it will be a big sweep for “The Brutalist.“ The only competition will be “Emilia Pérez.” Look for “Wicked” to win production design and costume design. It could also beat Dune for Visual Effects. Brody is a shoo-in for Best Actor. However, if the Academy wants to stick it to Donald Trump, they could give it to Sebastian Stan.
The 97th Academy Awards will be presented on Sunday, March 2 on ABC-TV.
I will probably take a couple of weeks off from this podcast and then return with either some political rants or more autobiographical stories.
By the way, you know that I always sign off with the words, “Fly safe, everyone.” That salutation comes from an online outer space game I play called “Eve Online.” For me, it means have fun, but be careful. These days, unfortunately, it has a double meaning with all of the tragic air accidents we have seen. But the intent remains the same. In these turbulent times, whenever we fear or whatever threatens us, remember to have fun but be safe.
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I will see you next time as we continue contemplating life. Until then, fly safe.
Okay, here is the spoiler section about “Conclave.”
Just as the Cardinals are about to lock themselves into the Vatican to deliberate on who will be the new Pope, a new Bishop arrives to claim that the previous Pope has elevated him to Cardinal just before his death. The Cardinals accept his credentials, and he is permitted to participate in the voting. After multiple Cardinals are faced with charges of misconduct, manipulation, and other scandals, this newly appointed Cardinal stands up and makes a speech chewing them out and telling them to cut the crap and politics and just elect someone, for God’s sake. Although he is a complete unknown, pun intended, space.they rally around him, and he is elected the new Pope.
If it had ended there, I would’ve congratulated them for a clever plot twist and would have really enjoyed the entire experience.
After the election, it is discovered that this new Pope is actually intersex. They have both male and female sexual characteristics. They claim that the previous Pope knew about it and also supported his decision to not have surgery to make him male definitively.
Of course, had the other Cardinals known the secret, they would’ve never elected him and would have likely stripped him as a Cardinal, Bishop, and priest.
I have some personal experience attempting to write a story about an intersex character. I sought advice from knowledgeable people about the condition in addition to my own extensive online research. I wanted to ensure that I was handling the topic sensitively. Ultimately, one of the people I contacted to advise me refused to take the job, saying that even my brief outline of the story was, in their opinion, offensive to intersex people. They would not allow for the possibility that a straight, cisgender male might be able to handle the topic sensitively.
The advisor who turned down commenting further on my story has a YouTube channel in which they discuss intersex issues and how to sensitively portray them in stories. One of the number one things they said you should not do is to make their condition a surprise plot point. They were referring exactly to the kind of thing that occurred in Conclave.
In my story, I reveal my character’s genetic and gender issues upfront within a few paragraphs of a 25,000-word story. It was not a surprise gotcha reveal like it was in Conclave. I have linked that YouTube video talking about mistakes made in portraying intersex characters. I have asked the creator of that video if they would review the film “Conclave”. I looked through their channel and did not find such a review.
My guess is they would not approve.
That’s all for now. Fly safe, everyone.